Muslims and the Problem with Democracy?

In their article Ruiz and Rubio-Marin (2009)2° point out that dem­ocratic parity ‘must define what democracy is fundamentally about’. Similarly in her work Ann Philips²¹ concludes that, ‘Democratic par­ity matters because without it we do not yet have democracy’.

In this part of the chapter, I pose a series of questions to consider the ways in which the idea and meaning of democracy as a common sig- nifier of democracy may serve to ascribe meanings and value (within minority Muslim communities) in fixed and problematic ways. For example, the assumptions and goals of democracy; the way in which it engages and intersects with non-state norms and minority commu­nities, while raising a critical reading on the relationship between de­mocracy, the West and Islam. Our efforts to complicate the concepts and practice of democracy are important if democracy also exhibits an ensemble of practices and democratic institutions that seek to reg­ulate the exercise of communal and private governance based upon orientalist tropes of Muslims simply lacking the credentials of free­dom and democracy.

operate to regulate conduct and behaviours in ever complex ways dis­playing the myriad and multiple forms of political power in action. The multiple dynamics of power seek to define/address/manage and control with implications for all in minority and majority communi­ties. Social and legal norms operate within and across communities in relation ‘to the division of labour, authority between family members and intimate behaviour’. We have, of course, a long and expansive body of postcolonial scholarship that produces important insights into relations of power, legality and identity.

Yet even this (brief) overview of governmentality, power and state law relations raises important questions in relation to relations of power, dialogue, intercultural dialogue, positionality and rights and contributes to our understanding of the myriad and complex lived social realities of law and legalities that take shape in many different forms both in state law relations and as private governance within minority communities. The rise of racist governmentalities, for ex­ample, also raises an important set of questions as the logic of de­mocracy that can also rest upon a logic of West and non-West and those who are democratic versus non-democratic.

ShaiiaCo CttsawdM-IstamFamify 105 سأ be transgressive of the norms, conventions and structures that under­pin the contemporary world.’²⁴ Yet surprising perhaps, in a world of difference, complexity and challenge the emergence of fixed notions of identity and religious has only in recent times gained increasing urgency. Furthermore as a political signifier democracy with its par­ticular cultural formations in the ‘West’ provides the essence of hu­man identity transcending cultural and religious divides and acting as a designator of freedom, capacity but also government practices and hybrid Western identities. We therefore understand democracy as closely aligned to a Western identity and to be anti-Western is to be anti-democratic.